Jane Stillwater is a freelance journalist, war correspondent, blogger, political Cassandra and author of "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today's Middle East," now available on Amazon.com. Her latest motto is "Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world."

Sunday, September 03, 2006

American absolutists' two biggest mistakes: Communist China & Islamistan I've written about this before but the subject still fascinates me. After World War II, American absolutists in Washington DC totally discredited all foreign policy input from the exact people they needed to hear from the most -- the "Old China Hands". Diplomats, historians, soldiers, missionaries and many other experts on China at that time repeatedly warned the know-it-all idiots in Washington that their policy of supporting corrupt dictators and funding wars in China would only lead to a complete take-over by the Communist army under Mao.

As a result of their efforts to talk sense into the American absolutists formulating government foreign policy in Washington, the "Old China Hands" were called Commie sympathizers and hounded out of politics. At least I think that's what happened. Good Grief! Now I'm going to have to go do some research. I hate research.

Don't you just love it when Fox and CNN tell you exactly what to think and you don't have to think for yourself?

Time to get out my 1982 edition of "The World Book". Nope. No mention of the politics of that time. It just says that Mao took over China in 1949. I need something more substantial than that. Time to break down and Google.

"John Service, along with other diplomatic and military personnel stationed in China," said Google, "became an advocate for a change of policy in China. Service was one of the more articulate spokesmen for this point of view. They saw the existing Chinese Nationalist Government as 'selfish and corrupt, incapable and obstructive' – certain to lose the civil war with the Chinese Communists that was sure to follow the end of World War II." (Source: www.oldkewgardens.com)

"The policy recommendations of Service and others were rejected in Washington," continued Google, "and Service was recalled to the U.S. in 1945. When the Chinese civil war resumed (as Service predicted it would), the new Ambassador to China, Patrick Hurley, blamed that fact on U.S. Foreign Service officers such as Service who, he said, had pro-Communist sympathies and had sided with the Communists." That sounds like something John Bolton would say! Or Karl Rove. Or Joseph McCarthy....

"The fall of China to the communists was followed by the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R) of Wisconsin. McCarthy charged that the defeat of the Nationalist Government was the result of disloyal U.S. State Department officers. One of those named was John Service, whom he described as 'a known associate and collaborator with Communists'. The bitter irony of it was that...Service and other Foreign Service China specialists were blamed for the loss of China even though the China policy they had recommended more than 5 years before the Communist victory was not the one the United States followed." Shades of Donnie Rumsfeld -- who labels all critics of his failed Iraq policy as being supporters of terrorism. Or fascism. Or communism. Or all three.

We've done our Google research. Good for us! And now we know pretty much without doubt that American absolutists who refused to listen to good advice in the late 1940s ended up helping create modern-day China just as surely as did Chairman Mao.

Fast forward to 2001, when the current American absolutists in Washington refused to listen to ANYONE who knew anything about the Middle East. American generals who objected to the absolutists' ill-conceived plans for invading Iraq were fired. UN warnings were ignored. Even the CIA's advice was discounted.

Will the result be the same for the Middle East today as it was for China in 1949? Yeah. Most likely. If the American absolutists now in power in Washington continue in the direction they are now going in, they will cause -- indeed, have already started in motion -- a reaction that will soon create a new Middle East nation as large and possibly as powerful as China, stretching from Kosovo in the west to Indonesia in the east.

This new nation should be called Bushlandia, after its creator. More likely, however, they will call it Islamistan.